by Alis Hawkins
‘You’re not wanting to make more braids?’ I call after him. ‘Haven’t we got enough money now?’
He does not look back, just raises a hand. ‘I won’t be long.’
I stand and watch him stride away down the alley.
Deliberately, I put thoughts of the demon out of my mind. Whatever happened to Scaff, Hob is right; we should go. For, if people believe that we have brought the pestilence here, there could be trouble.
‘He was telling lies.’
Watkyn’s voice makes me jump. I look down at him. ‘Who was?’
‘Your friend.’
‘Hob? What lies?’
‘He did come out in the night — he lifted the canvas, woke me up.’ The dog, Growler, is no longer at the boy’s side. He must just be back from returning him to Harold the butcher. ‘Growler doesn’t like him.’
‘Doesn’t like Hob?’
‘No. He bares his teeth whenever he comes near. And his hackles go up.’
‘Hob’s afraid of dogs.’
‘That’s stupid! I’m not afraid!’
Pride straightens Watkyn’s back, sticks his chin out. He — a little lad — is more valiant than a grown man. I grin at him and he grins back.
‘He only wanted his cloak, anyway. Told me not to tell anyone he’d been up. Said he didn’t want Scaff to know he was lying there shivering.’
His cloak. I think of the bloodstain I found on the inside, where it had been wadded up.
In my mind I see Hob folding the cloak, inside out. I see him standing behind Scaff and holding the cloak over his face. Did he contribute another dint to Scaff’s head to subdue him?
‘Did he say anything else?’ I ask Watkyn.
‘He complained that Scaff was mean to only give you one blanket each.’ The boy looks at me from under his fringe of curls. ‘Called Scaff my father.’
I make a wry face; I can imagine what short shrift he gave Hob for that mistake.
‘Told him he was no father of mine, that he could go to the devil for all I cared.’ He stops. I assume he is ashamed of his words, given that Scaff may well be gone to the devil, but his next words give the lie to that. ‘He said that I mightn’t have to worry about Scaff much longer. I asked him what he meant and he said there was a plague coming and Scaff’d most likely get what he deserved.’ Watkyn watches my face. ‘Is that true? Does the plague kill bad people and let the good ones live?’
I cannot lie to him, he will know the truth of it soon enough.
‘No. The good die with the bad. And sometimes the bad live on and prosper.’
I am about to ask him whether he would like the saint’s blessing before we go when his mother comes rushing in to the yard. Her eyes fasten not on Watkyn but on me. ‘Another man’s sick. Tom Gerasse.’ She looks at me as if I should know the name.
‘Who’s he?’
‘One of the men you sold a horseshoe relic to last night.’
Not me, I want to tell her, that was Hob. I had nothing to do with that.
She holds me with her eyes. ‘His wife wants those six shillings back. Says you’re welcome to your relic — it’s no use to her.’
Six shillings? Tom Gerasse didn’t have the courage to tell his wife how much of their money he had spent.
‘Mistress.’
I turn at the sound of Hob’s voice. The alewife’s anger has so taken me aback that I did not see him come back into the yard. He looks her in the eye, the model of an honest man. ‘I’m very sorry for this lady but I didn’t ask her husband to buy our horseshoes. It was him and his friends who persuaded me to sell. They all but went down on bended knee and begged me to sell them.’
‘That’s as may be, but knowing she’s married to a fool doesn’t help Marjorie Gerasse. By sunset, by all accounts, she’ll have no husband and precious little money. Having that six shillings back would make a world of difference to her and her little ones.’
‘Hob —’ I begin. But he is already answering her.
‘That’s not how the world of buying and selling works — you know it isn’t. If you sell a man a jug of ale and he takes it home and drinks it and then comes back and tells you he wants his money back because his children have no bread, do you give it him?’ He gives her no chance to answer. ‘No, of course you don’t.’ He shrugs. ‘If Tom Gerasse didn’t have six shillings to spare then he shouldn’t have pressed it on me. I’m not responsible for his fecklessness.’
‘It wasn’t fecklessness — he bought your relic thinking it would keep his family safe! But it hasn’t.’
‘Keeping folk safe from the pestilence is the saint’s business, not mine.’
She takes a step towards us. Mindful of her readiness to resort to blows, I step back but Hob holds his ground.
‘You sold him a relic which has no power.’
‘Mistress Scaff. You weren’t there, so you don’t know what was said. But ask Martin, he’s an honest man — honest to a fault, I could say. Ask him whether I ever said that those horseshoes had the power to prevent plague.’
Her eyes cut sideways to me but she keeps her mouth closed. She will not give Hob the satisfaction of obedience.
‘Did I, Martin?’ he insists. ‘Did I say those horseshoes had power?’
We have already been through what Hob did and did not say with Scaff.
‘No.’ I clamp my lips shut.
The alewife’s eyes are cold and I stand, discomfited, beneath her stare. ‘My boy likes you. Says you’re a good man. Kind. Until today, I’ve always thought him a good judge of character.’
I cannot look at her. Not while a purse with twenty-five shillings in it lies in my press. Twenty-five shillings collected from the parishioners of Sibbertswell for the purchase of the horseshoes worn by our mare; horseshoes that truly might have been thrown in a miracle, except that only one could be.
There is a moment when I might loose the canvas, throw open the press and snatch up the purse. Take it to Tom Gerasse’s wife, I might to say to her in that moment. Give it to her.
But the moment passes.
She looks from me to Hob and back.
‘You’re no better than Scaff. Neither of you. You say just what he’d’ve said. Business is business.’
Her scorn shrivels me, like salt on a slug.
‘But your saint is a woman. She’d have compassion on a woman who’ll be a widow before the day’s out.’ She spits, deliberately, on the ground at our feet. ‘You shame her.’
As we walk down Snodland’s main street, towards the causeway that will take us across the river, I see every countenance we meet turned in anger and enmity against us. Word has obviously gone around about Tom Gerasse and the uselessness of the relic he acquired at such vast expense.
Nobody touches us — forethought for their health overcomes their detestation — but I feel their stares reaching into my flesh. I try fixing my eyes on the ground ahead of me but then the cat-calls begin.
‘Good riddance!’
‘Yes — take your false relics and go!’
‘Damn you for plague carriers!’
‘Run! Run!’
This last is from a gang of apprentices who begin picking up stones from the street and throwing them in our direction. Fortunately, all the large stones are well bedded in and there are no stones big enough to break bones but pebbles can hurt when they are flung by a strong arm and we cover our heads with our arms in self-defence.
As one apprentice runs up behind us, apparently thinking to shy his stone at Hob’s head from a lesser distance, Hob turns and charges at him, bringing him to the ground. He pins him and begins punching his face, in a fury. I can see the rest of the gang rushing towards us and I pull Hob off.
‘Leave him. Or they’ll beat us to death.’
Hob stands up, his knuckles bloody. ‘Come on then!’ he roars at the advancing crowd. ‘If you think we’ve brought the plague, come and take me!’
They skid to a halt at these words, those behind almost flooring those in fr
ont. Their dander is up so high that I believe they had forgotten the pestilence.
‘Yes! Not so brave now, are you?’ Before they can stoop to pick up more stones, Hob charges at them, cloak flying, knife in his hand. He looks deranged, plague-mad, and I do not wonder that the apprentices turn tail and flee.
As I watch them run back up the street, each disappearing up a different alley, I see a small figure coming towards us. I wait, knowing full well that his mother has sent him. He wastes no time.
‘Will Gerasse is my friend,’ he begins before a woman passing by tries to pull him away by his tunic.
‘Come away from him, Watkyn.’
The boy shakes her off and fixes his gaze on me once more. ‘He was going to be apprenticed to the cordwainer. If his mother can apprentice him, that’s one less mouth to feed. She needs the six shillings for his fee.’
Hob hears his words as he stalks back to the cart. ‘In a week’s time she’ll have no mouths to feed, including her own,’ he says, as if he is speaking to a grown man not a boy barely old enough to be put out to work. ‘If the father’s died of the plague, they’ll all be dead of it soon.’
Watkyn ignores Hob and directs his words to me. ‘Not everyone dies. You didn’t.’
‘No.’
‘Will needs his apprentice fee.’
I nod and motion him to take the mare’s reins. Before I can begin untying the canvas, Hob has me by the arm.
‘What’re you doing? Their money’s no good to them when they’re dead!’
‘The boy’s right. They may live. Not everybody in a household catches the pestilence. You didn’t.’
His grip on my arm tightens and I see his jaw clench. ‘If you give him that money, the other two’ll be out in a flash wanting theirs back as well.’
In that moment I make a decision. And, even as I make it, I know it is one I may quickly come to regret.
‘I’m not giving them your money, Hob — you can keep that thirty-six shillings, I don’t want a penny of it. I’ll keep the rest as my share.’ This makes us almost even — the twenty-five shillings from Sibbertswell and the ten shillings or so in the press. ‘We can use the money you hid —’ I drop my eyes to the hem of his cloak — ‘for anything we need before we reach Salster.’
Is there a slight lessening of grimness on Hob’s face? He gives a curt nod.
‘If you must. But make it quick. We need to be over the river and gone.’
I open the press and hold the knotted shirt out to the boy. ‘I’m giving this to you, Watkyn. Wait a week and if the widow Gerasse is still alive, give it to her. If she’s dead and the children alive, give it to whoever takes them in. If, in a week, they’re all dead, it’s yours. You can use it to apprentice yourself to the butcher.’
CHAPTER 29
Noon has come and gone and, with it, most of the clouds. Ahead of us we can see the dog-leg in the river where the bridge takes the road to London. Rochester’s castle squats above it on a bluff, standing guard.
Hob takes hold of the mare’s bridle and pulls her to a stop. She rolls her eyes and bares her teeth at him but plants her feet just the same.
‘We’re better off not going inside the walls,’ he tells me. ‘We can skirt through the suburbs and pick up the road to Salster that way.’
‘D’you think those outside the walls’ll be spared if the pestilence is inside?’
Hob picks at his beard. ‘It’s not about the pestilence.’
‘What then?’
He drops his hand, his eyes still fixed on the buildings that rise above the walls. ‘It might just be wiser to keep away from people.’
‘Why?’
He glances at me. ‘I don’t know what happened to Scaff —’ he puts up a hand to forestall my protest. ‘I know you say you had nothing to do with it — and I don’t care, bastard had it coming, either way. But —’ he stops till I look him in the eye — ‘I think the demon that makes you walk at night is getting stronger.’
Though my stomach clenches, I say nothing, waiting for some kind of explanation.
‘At the beginning — when I first saw you walking, on the hearth at Tredgham — I could tell the demon what to do. I’d say, “Go back to bed, Martin, everything’s as it should be,” and you’d go. Or I’d say, “Put the Maiden back where you found her,” and you’d do it.’ He stops, his eyes watchful, seeing how I take this. When I give a nod, he continues. ‘Well, last night, I heard you get up. Not surprising — you weren’t taking much care to be quiet. I called out to you, softly, so as not to wake anybody else — still thought Scaff might’ve been lying outside the door, bastard that he was. But you didn’t answer me. So I knew it was the demon making you walk. I thought I’d better get you back to bed before you stumbled into Scaff.’ He stops again.
‘So?’
‘I said, “Martin — go back to bed,” but you took no notice. Then you opened the door and I said, louder, “Don’t go out there!” but you just went, and let the door swing open behind you. Even that didn’t wake you.’
‘Did you follow me?’
He pulls at his beard again. ‘No.’
‘Why not — weren’t you worried about what the demon might make me do?’
‘I was a damn sight more worried about what it’d do to me if I tried to stop it! The staff and the Maiden were in the room with me —’ He stops.
‘And you thought you’d just let the demon do as it liked?’ He shrugs. Is he just a little ashamed of himself? If what he says is true, then perhaps it is wise to keep out of the city. But I am in need of protection, myself.
‘If we go into the city, we could find a smith, get some more horseshoes for the cart. Keep the demon away.’
He eyes me. Is there a new wariness in his gaze? ‘We could. But with you giving in to Scaff’s shrew of a widow and dishing out silver like there was no tomorrow, I wouldn’t trust those other men not to come after us for their money back. If they start asking after us and they find out we were here, looking for more worn horseshoes...’ He puts his forearms on the mare’s back. ‘We can find a smith elsewhere. We’ve got food and water enough for today and tomorrow. Let’s just find the Salster road and get on it.’
I do not want to concede. I want four horseshoes nailed to the corners of the cart again before night is anywhere near falling. But Hob’s argument holds weight — all along the Downs we have been preceded by goodwill and received with open arms; if the people of Salster are to welcome their saint back amongst them, it would be better not to come trailing a reputation for trickery.
‘All right. The next lane we come to, we’ll take.’
We start off again towards the walls. The road is empty but for us and, to right and left, this place has the feeling of having been deserted, given up for dead. Roofs sprout crows instead of smoke, and starlings hop amongst garden plantings with nobody to shoo them away. I see a cat darting around the side of a house and wonder whether mice and rats move out when the people who have unwillingly fed them are gone.
We come to a church overlooking the river, its small yard spread around two sides. My eyes are drawn to an untidy little row of people and I pull the mare up.
They are standing on the south side of the church, beneath the small, old-fashioned windows of the nave. At their feet, a long trench has been opened up.
I narrow my eyes and see a figure in what must be clerical robes raise his hand to make the sign of the cross. He speaks, bows and turns away. Two of those left at the side of the trench begin shovelling earth into it.
As we watch, the remaining folk leave the edge of the pit and make their way towards the lych-gate on the roadside. A young man has his arm around his wife’s shoulders. The other two — an older man and woman — walk as if they know nothing of each other or the couple ahead of them. All keep a distance from each other, though God alone knows what difference that will make. They have lived with the pestilence or they would not be here.
‘How many?’ Hob asks, inclining his fore
head to the common grave.
‘Twenty-four,’ the older man answers. Then, seeing Hob look over his shoulder at the trench, adds, ‘They’re laid four deep.’
‘At least,’ I say, ‘you have a priest to see them into the ground.’
‘Till he dies, like the rest.’
Then, with no more said at parting than he offered or was given in greeting, he leaves us.
We are scarcely fifty yards further on when we hear a cry behind us. ‘Good day to you!’
We turn and see the parson from the burial catching us up. ‘It’s so rare to see travellers these days. Where’ve you come from?’
‘Today, just over the river from Snodland,’ I tell him, ‘but we’ve been travelling for weeks. From the King’s Dene Forest in Gloucestershire.’
He smiles. ‘Where all the iron comes from.’
I smile back; his pleasure at knowing something about my home is a fragment of courtesy from another time.
‘What brings you to Rochester? We’re not able to offer much in the way of hospitality any more. If you’d come a year ago, you’d scarcely have been able to drive your mare along this road, but now...’ He looks about him. ‘So many people used to come and go. Pilgrims to Saint William’s shrine.’
I draw him back from his melancholy reflections. ‘We’re on a pilgrimage ourselves. To Salster and Saint Cynryth’s shrine.’
He frowns. ‘Salster’s shrine is to Saint Dernstan.’
‘Yes — at the priory church. But Saint Cynryth’s shrine is in the woods to the north of the city.’
‘Burdynge Forest? I’ve never heard of a shrine there. Nor of your saint.’
‘Saint Cynryth,’ I repeat. ‘I don’t suppose she is well-known amongst pilgrims. I believe she’s mostly worshipped there by local people.’
She shakes his head, eyes anxious. ‘I know Salster. But I’ve never heard anybody speak of a saint called Cynryth whose shrine is in Burdynge Forest.’
We part company with the priest beneath the wall of a vineyard. He assures us that if we follow the road that skirts it, we will find ourselves on the Salster road just below the east gate.
‘I hope you find what you’re searching for,’ he says in parting. ‘At least in Salster you’ll find a city that’s survived the pestilence. Pray God we’ll be able to say that, here, soon.’
